Ben Fry
@benfry.com
đ€ 1022
đ„ 141
đ 299
Founder of
https://fathom.info
, co-founder of
https://processing.org
, lecturer at
https://mit.edu
Nearly every 7 digit number can be found in the first 100M digits of pi. Search for your favorites, or simply bask in the wonders of math and probability:
www.benfry.com/pi/
Happy Ï day!
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Peek in Pi
Find any number inside the digits of Ï.
https://www.benfry.com/pi/
3 days ago
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âThe second-system effect (also second-system syndrome) is the tendency for a successful first system (often small and relatively elegant) to be followed by a second system that becomes over-engineered or bloated.â
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-...
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Second-system effect - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
9 days ago
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There I fixed it
15 days ago
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Scott Horton
16 days ago
The NYT style guide
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James Gilleard
19 days ago
I have a new digital illustraion course live now! If interested - sign up here
www.jamesgilleardacademy.com/beginnercourse
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Oregon Zoo
19 days ago
This frisky pair of bongos, a critically endangered species of African antelope, is settling into the zoo's Africa area. Meet Banjo and Bentley!
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No JavaScript! Hilarious. Love this so much.
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22 days ago
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born miserable
over 2 years ago
[hospital] SURGEON: [lowers mask] I'm sorry, we were unable to separate the art from the artist ME: are they S: yes, theyâre still an asshole
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Using a great typeface is like cheating at design because your work instantly gets so much better. After years of mucking, we started using MD System in a prototype. Seeing what the tool *could* look like was a huge motivation to finally make it happen. Once we saw it, we couldn't wait to build it.
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29 days ago
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Rest in Peace, Robert Tinney, the artist behind many ofâand the best ofâthese covers:
tinney.net/in-memoriam
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about 1 month ago
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This piece was published exactly a year ago, and at the time I /hoped/ it was at least a bit alarmist, but it has proven to be overwhelmingly correct, and perhaps even understated. Well worth reading to understand where we are, where we're headed in the US:
www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...
about 1 month ago
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Fifteen years later, it's a new version of âif IBM's Watson is so f*ing smart, why can't it fix IBM's stock price?â âŠbut this is even more on-point.
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about 1 month ago
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Can't get over how gleefully people use the word âagenticâ as if it doesn't sound like a terrible disease. âMillions were sickened by Agentic Flu and thousands more died of the hemorrhagic fever before scientists were able to identify a vaccine candidateâŠâ
www.apple.com/newsroom/202...
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Xcode 26.3 unlocks the power of agentic coding
Xcode 26.3 introduces support for agentic coding, a new way in Xcode for developers to build apps, powered by coding agents from Anthropic and OpenAI.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/xcode-26-point-3-unlocks-the-power-of-agentic-coding/
about 1 month ago
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Always appreciate people who can put numbers in perspective.
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about 2 months ago
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âmy dream of combining my loves of math, art, and teaching into a book is finally a realityâ â@gwenbeads.bsky.social
www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...
about 2 months ago
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Ben Fry
Jimmy Two Hands (cozy era)
about 2 years ago
Happy large boulder the size of a small boulder day for all who celebrate
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Beautiful perspective from this map of the world re-oriented using the âSpilhausâ projection, which depicts Earth as a single, connected ocean. From Woods Hole's âWhy the Oceanâ campaign:
www.whoi.edu/campaign/why...
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about 2 months ago
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Ami Fields-Meyer
about 2 months ago
I wrote the speech I *wish* Chuck Schumer would give tonight - as an actual opposition leader. Here it is: "My fellow Americans: At this hour, an unrestrained force of militarized and violent federal officers is carrying out a project of ethnic cleansing in the streets of American cities." 1/14
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Alondra Nelson
about 2 months ago
A reminder that we can expect and must demand so more from political leadersâincluding moral clarity. I was fortunate to have Ami, a great speechwriter, work with me on several White House speeches. Read what he would have Schumer say in an alternate parallel universe of courage and conviction đ§”
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âThe bugs are real. The math is not. All estimates are made up. Your frustration, however, is valid.â
www.bugsappleloves.com
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Bugs Apple Loves
Bugs Apple won't fix. Why else would they keep them around for so long? We did the math.
https://www.bugsappleloves.com/
about 2 months ago
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This is art. The writing style of ChatGPT, recursively explained using that same voice.
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about 2 months ago
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21,689 rows of film data (100 MB file!) and filtering by Director instantaneously on hover. All in the browser, no roundtrip to a server. Just insane what we can do here:
rowboat.net/f/7vb8dx84
(I'm actually moving slower in the first half to make it less confusingâsecond half is actual speed.)
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2 months ago
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Boosting for 1) using bread for infographics and 2) what the costs of running a business actually look like
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2 months ago
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Ethan Marcotte
2 months ago
I really, really like this post from design consultancy Fathom: itâs a thoughtful take on why theyâre not planning to incorporate âgenerative AIâ into their practice.
www.fathom.info/notebook/260...
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A culture of work we believe in | Fathom Information Design
Katherine reflects on how we've been thinking and talking about generative AI in the studio.
https://www.fathom.info/notebook/260109/
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An excellent piece by
@kayserifserif.place
about how we're thinking about Generative AI at
@fathom.info
, focused on the things we /want/ to buildâfrom the artifacts we produce to the internal culture that makes it happen:
www.fathom.info/notebook/260...
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A culture of work we believe in | Fathom Information Design
Katherine reflects on how we've been thinking and talking about generative AI in the studio.
https://www.fathom.info/notebook/260109/
2 months ago
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While trying to sort out and assemble my own thoughts about generative AI, it's been helpful to take in the work of others who are more articulate about it.
www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...
2 months ago
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âYou openâŠan article on some subject you know well⊠You read & see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backwardâreversing cause and effect. I call these the âwet streets cause rainâ stories.â
2 months ago
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Couple years ago, I had like a one line quote in Wired about Apple's App Store policy hell. After the article got attention, they actually deployed comms people to lie & try to scare the writer into removing the quote. So it's hilarious they can't seem to find aaaanyone to comment on this. đ
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2 months ago
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Ben Fry
Christopher Mathias
2 months ago
Holy fuck they actually did it
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Terrible Maps
2 months ago
Scottish gritter truck names are on another level
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Rebecca Solnit
2 months ago
A detail.
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One of my favorite things about living in a city is catching all the different languages being spoken. What a treat.
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2 months ago
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Emily Bressler's âI Work For an Evil Company, but Outside Work, Iâm Actually a Really Good Personâ for McSweeneyâs might be one of the best things written this year, and the backstory only confirms and further elevates it:
www.patreon.com/posts/top-25...
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Top 25 of '25: Emily Bressler's "I Work For an Evil Company, but Outside Work, I'm Actually a Really Good Person" | McSweeney's Internet Tendency
Get more from McSweeney's Internet Tendency on Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/posts/top-25-of-25-i-146294494?utm_campaign=patron_engagement&utm_source=post_link&post_id=146294494&utm_id=c559792a-c24b-4767-9e01-293f5ffd9d25&utm_medium=email
3 months ago
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â6 or 7 characters should be plenty for a password, or maybe 8 if you mustâ
3 months ago
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For our holiday mailing, we gave our printers (inkjet, plotter, filament, and Paul) a break, and prepared an animated minisite with recipes from everyone in the studio. Inspired by LEGO (or Minecraft, or pixels, or things that are blocky), it's a fun range of recipes & characters behind them.
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3 months ago
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words
3 months ago
jenny holzer (2012)
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A fun writeup from Ellory about what we've been up to at Fathom over the past year. If we were good at the social, we might do this every few months like reasonable people. Instead we're going long form, and if folks don't read it, we're gonna go even longer in 2026.
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3 months ago
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3 months ago
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Fascinating piece about the manifold problems with data centers in space:
taranis.ie/datacenters-...
It's not just the heat problems, but it doesn't appear to make sense on any dimensionâŠÂ complexity, size, reliability, cost, anything.
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Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build datacenters in space. TL;DR: It's not going to work.
https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/
3 months ago
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I'm what now?
3 months ago
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Super impressed with this extremely well-documented, and well-designed, open source hacking project. What a pleasant surprise:
www.typeframe.net
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Typeframe
A collection of open-source hardware and software for building writerdecks/cyberdecks.
https://www.typeframe.net/
3 months ago
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These are magnificent.
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3 months ago
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âSo yeah, Iâm having a great time with Qobuz, both because the product is genuinely better than Spotify, and because it feels like sweet release to be free of that shitpit.â
www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete...
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How to quit Spotify
This Black Friday, here's a guide to finding the best Spotify alternative
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete-guide-to-quitting-spotify
3 months ago
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Did you know?
3 months ago
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Ben Fry
Josh Kantor
3 months ago
BestChristmasSongOf '70, '71, '72, '73, '74, '75, '76, '77, '78, '79, '80, '81, '82, '83, '84, '85, '86, '87, '88, '89, '90, '91, '92, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, '00, '01, '02, '03, '04, '05, '06, '07, '08, '09, '10, '11, '12, '13, '14, '15, '16, '17, '18, '19, '20, '21, '22, '23, '24, '25
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Donny Hathaway - This Christmas (Official Music Video)
YouTube video by RHINO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhKVSZsRxQM
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Down the rabbit hole of âwhat European countries are not part of NATO and why?â this morning. The history of Irish neutrality:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_n...
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3 months ago
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kottke.org
3 months ago
A charming short film on how a Foley artist would sound design a day in an ordinary life. âRunning hands through spaghetti noodles stands in for hair washingâŠâ
[kottke.org]
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Sound Designing a Life
This is a charming short film on how a Foley artist would sound design a day in an ordinary life. Running hands through spaghetti noodles stands in for hair washing, a spray bottle sounds like rustling sheets, that sor
https://kottke.org/15/10/sound-designing-a-life
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I'm terrible at marketing so I asked ChatGPT 5 to make an ad for
rowboat.net
4 months ago
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Inverse Histogram of Seltzer Flavor Preference at New England-based Design & Software Development Studio (2025)
4 months ago
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Fun with streets⊠from 2007, here's what a map of the United States* looks like made up of only roads. No other features have been added to this image, however they emerge as roads avoid mountains, and sparse areas convey low population. * the âlower 48,â sorry AK & HI
www.benfry.com/allstreets/
4 months ago
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